Dolly's Dreamings

Titanic Exhibition

It has been a bit Bank Holidayish weather here today, well at least this morning. It was grim and grey and wet and so we opted for an indoor activity.

We started off with breakfast out. We had seen that georgie Porgies did breakfast for £5.99 and whilst I wouldn't eat there again for dinner I figured breakfast would be ok. And it was. I don't really do cooked breakfast and it was the lack of hot food that put me off. Nij had cooked and said it was OK but not terribly hot. I did have an omelet which they make whilst you wait and that was good and hot.

All in all it was good value for £5.99 and made a special treat as a one off.

We then headed to the Sea City Museum in Southampton as we wanted to see the Titanic exhibition. It was incredibly quiet on the roads and the museum was quiet when we arrived It was bombed when we left with queues very long and the traffic getting in and out of the city was incredibly heavy. But by the time we were on the way home it was a bit more like May - warm and sunny.

The museum is very good and the exhibits well laid out, varied and informative. Not a free museum, it needed to be good to warrant the cost.

We both enjoyed it and learnt a great deal. I have always been fascinated by the Titanic as it sank on my dad's birthday (though well before he was born) and when my Dad was in the navy he worked for the White Star Line too.

My photo of the day is of some books I bought for the school library as one year group do a project all about Titanic. (Plus I was not allowed to take photos inside)

 
I have a page to share today made with Dee Bee Designs goodies from PBP as part of my CT commitment this month.

Credits

Who You Are collage rubs and clusters set by Dee Bee Designs at Pickleberrypop

Character Counts kit by Dee Bee Designs at Pickleberrypop

The flower clusters and rub ons are totally awesome - expect to see them A LOT

The photo is of Emerald Lake in the Canadian Rockies - a trip we will never forget.

Today I am thankful for

• a day out
• interesting things to see and learn
• a great scrapping opportunity that came my way today

I know people loved the video I shared yesterday so I can't resist another one today - this baby Jaguar called Bella is one of the cats we are going to visit this summer at Panther Ridge and we are so excited. (Bella isn't a baby like this anymore though)

 

and finally my one minute devotional page today from my calendar

Driving to work yesterday, I stopped at a red light. As I absently looked at my hand on the steering wheel, I noticed the long scar on my wrist. Suddenly I drifted back 36 years to the summer following my high school graduation. I was living in my hometown of Fort Valley, Georgia, and working on the assembly line at the Blue Bird school bus factory. Eighteen years old, I was making school buses in order to save money for college.

Bus-body assembly lines are dangerous places. Amid powerful machinery, hydraulic presses, hot metal, and a vast assortment of high-powered tools, it’s easy to get injured. One day, as I cut through a steel beam with a blowtorch, my wrist grazed the sharp, molten edge of the beam. Suddenly I was cut to the bone with a wound that would scar my wrist for life.

For a while the scar was prominent and jagged. Sometimes it would swell, becoming inflamed and painful. But I noticed yesterday that now the jagged scar is smooth, faded, almost unnoticeable. Time has worked its healing wonder.

Sometimes events in our lives wound us so deeply that an emotional scar is left for a lifetime. The death of my father when I was 14 years old cut much more deeply than that steel beam. Yet, over time, I have learned that God has a way of making emotional scars grow smaller, too. A grief that we feared would consume us; a disappointment so intense that it maimed us; a shameful mistake that seared our self-image—all of these things can be healed by time and the loving grace of God.

Father, I am thankful that in You I have found a balm in Gilead that can make the wounded whole.

—SCOTT WALKER

Hysterical laughter

I have a new page to share made with dawn's new One Fine day kit.

 
It's a fab kit and I have loved using it.

I am now off to eat, take a chill pill in the form of some serious R and R and will hopefully feel way more sociable tomorrow after a decent night's sleep.

Today I am thankful for

• support - from many directions actually
• laughter, which eases the worst of tensions.

 
 

Be thankful - take time

Sometimes things happen that put life into perspective. You plod on through your life, moaning about minor irritations at times, forgetting to be truly grateful for the good things in life, the little things that happen around you that actually are incredibly special in their own small way. You rush through life without taking time to stop and smell the flowers. And then something happens that makes you appreciate all that is and all that you have.

Today is one f those days. I have a blessed life. I have no real problems to deal with. I am healthy and happy, safe and warm, fed and watered, loved and cherished. I have had troubles and grief but have worked through them and been supported through them, and I have so much to be grateful for.

I heard terribly sad news today. News of someone who sure as heck isn't as lucky and who isn't going to have much time left to enjoy the wonders of life. And as well as saddening me greatly it does make you appreciate what is for what it is whilst it is. A salutory lesson for us all.

 

I have another page with dawn's new kit to share - the happiness of a young girl taking her first steps into adult life and the happiness, and apprehension, that comes with that. The photo is my best friends daughter when we were blessed to share her 21st birthday celebrations with her. Isn't she beautiful?

 

 

Today I am thankful

• simply to be

Finally I made this for another Chicken soup challenge last night and almost forgot it.

  

5210, Death valley, Furnace Creek and stuff!

I have had a lovely day today. I have a lush new kit from Charmed Crafts and Cards and have been scrapping with pretty pretty papers all day (apart from a little walk about half an hour ago)

It is a joy to be paper scrapping. I love my digi but love the 'real feel' as well.

Obviously I can't share what I have made but I am really quite pleased with what I have done so far.

What I can share is my page for the prompt yesterday.

I am incredibly inspired by nature and especially mountains and lakes. We don't have any mountains here - just a few hills - and I LOVE mountains. Add a crystal clear icy cold lake fringed with pines and my happiness is complete.

It's always been mountains and lakes that move me most of all. So Canada was such a perfect holiday as the Rockies were full of scenic view after scenic view.

There weren't lakes (though there were mountains) on our Death Valley trip and what water there was, at Badwater, was certainly not crystal clear or icy cold.

We had always said we wanted to stay in Death Valley and choices are pretty limited really so we ofted for Furnace Creek ranch and it was really very nice.

Our room was very spacious with a patio outside to sit on (why would you when it was 128 and inside it was air conditioned!!!) There was a restuarant there (just as well as there was nowhere else to eat within an hours drive) a bar and also a museum giving the history of the Borax mining in the area which was fascinating.

 We were amazed that people lived there - out of choice. Not only was it incredibly hot and not a lot to do, but going shopping for even the bare essentials must be such a chore as there really is nowhere near. I guess the world is made up of people who really do enjoy very different things.

Anyway, we had a good evening and night and se off in the morning to see the rest of the valley.

One of the reasons we wanted the 4 x 4 was because there were a lot of unpaved roads we wanted to explore. And we did. It was great  funand this is to prove I drove on them too!!

We went up to Zabriske Point which was just a short walk and beautiful. It was also a teeny bit cooler beacuse it was higher up.

We then headed to our final place in the park, Dante's Peak, the highest part you can drive to. It was cooler and the views were great but heck ... what were all the wasps about. I kid you not when I say there were dozens and dozens of them all round the car. It was horrible trying to run the gauntlet of them and get in and even then we had one who hitch-hiked a ride that we had to encourage back out.

 

You can see the white salt deposits down int he valley at badwater, you can just about see the tiny badwater road and off in the distance you can see Furnace Creek.

So that was our experience of Death Valley. We headed out of the park and towards Vegas, stopping for a very pleasant couple of hours at Red Rock canyon - but that's a post for tomorrow!

My quote of the day today is

Today I am thankful for

• lush goodies to scrap with
• brown soda bread

 
 
  

5210 prompt 31 and It's Vegas Baby

Morning everyone. Still groggy as my body clock hasn't reset itself yet and I can't quite come to terms with sleeping till 9! I am a 6 am girl. I hate the way jet lag resets your body clock for you.

Anyway i digress. I have - at last - new work - proper paper work - to share.

I couldn't wait to do soemthing quick about the holiday. As it happened it didn't turn out as quick as I hoped, but I have finished my Vegas mini book. Well not so mini actually The pages are 6" x 8.5" so big enough to count as pages really. They are shaped chipboard - one of my many many purchases on holiday. They were selling these chipboard pages for 40c each and smaller ones for 25 c so I bought a whole mess of them. Some of thee shapes were interesting to cover with cardstock to make the ase, but heck, that was part of the fun.

Anyway, my first real project from the holiday .... my Viva Las Vegas book. We have been to Vegas many times - it is like nowhere else in the world, so it needed its very own book.

and this is the inside

 

I am posting single pages as you stand a chance of seeing what they say but that double just shows how it goes together.

 

 

I took a photo of the Las vegas sign for scrapping purposes and used it on that page to make my own printed paper.

The picture of the Strip was taken from the Eiffel Tower last trip. The Strip looks different now - much messier, as the empty lot and the Boardwalk have gone and there are rather ugly tower blocks there now. Not nearly so nice.

  We love Ceasars and have stayed there several times. It is a real traditional Strip hotel and beautiful. The first time we stayed there we thing they made a mistake and thought we were gamblers as we had a suite and it had a circular bedroom complete with circular bed and mirrored ceiling!

Their pool complex, the Garden of the Gods, is utterly beautiful. I could do a mini book just on that. (It's OK - relax. I won't!)

 

The Venetian is our favourite hotel on the Strip and where we choose to stay now. The rooms are all suites and you can see a photo of ours this time. we have stayed there three times and enjoyed every visit.

We have seen some great - and some not so great - shows in Vegas. This trip we saw Donny and Marie (and met them .... watch for that post later in the week) and they were brilliant. By far the best show was Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage and we were so glad we saw them. Not long after they stopped performing after Roy's dreadful accident with one of the tigers. It is probably the best show we have seen anywhere in the world.

The most disappointing show we have ever seen anywhere in the world was O at Bellagio. It was very expensive and a Cirque du Soleil and left us both cold.

 

We do tend to use Vegas as a launch pad (and an end of tour chill zone) for our exploration trips. From Vegas we have been on trips to the canyons (Zion, Bryce, Arches, Capitol Reef), the Grand canyon and Hoover Dam, Yosemite and Sequoia, Valley of Fire, Salt Lake City, the Tetons and Yellowstone and our full blown Wild West Tour. The final page documents that too.

It has been a fun book to complete and now I feel I can make a start on some DT work I need to do.

 

So onto project 5210 (which is seriously behind for me - I have no pages left after this week so do need to try and get moving on this or there won't be a post next Sunday. I apologise in advance if there is a week or two lapse. bear with me folks. If I miss a Sunday i will try and make it up at another point so there still end up being 52)

We have been thinking of outside space so this week we go large!

 

 

This is outside on a grand scale. I hope you like it and do let me know what you think. As ever, I  hate asking, but please do comment to let me know. It does motivate me to get my act together and I really need that right now as I have not been behind with this until now. Judging by the number of downloads there are less than half of the people who download who comment, which I still think is a shame.

Have fun and have a great Sunday.

 

EXCITING NEWS - Shimelle Digitals

You have NO IDEA how hard this has been to keep this news quiet. No idea.

But I managed it and can now reveal ......

 

drum roll please .....

 

I am part of a Baker's Dozen.

Shimelle has a brand new CT for her digital designs and I am lucky enough to be on it. And I am thrilled like you have no idea.

OK - so you may have a little idea.

It's no secret how much I admire that cupcake queen. The very first class I ever took in my life, as a very newbie scrapper, in November 2003 at Ascot at Bonanza, was with Shimelle, and I have been hooked ever since. Although my style may be very different to hers, and I can't begin to emulate it, I find everything she says and does such an inspiration. Her classes, on line and in real life, are awesome. Her students at school were very lucky cos she is one heck of a eacher. I recon I could listen to her talk about pain dry and be fascinated. Her creativity, her ideas, her promotion of scrapping and journalling and crafting and writing and the fact that she is a thoroughly nice person on line and in real life all means I am just so thrilld to have the chance to be on her CT.

Why baker's dozen? Well, there are 13 of us, because it's a perfect number.

Now I guess, as part of a CT, I ought to start earning my keep.

All 13 of us have worked with one of Shimelle's kits .... A Long and Winding Road .... which you can find on sale HERE and we have all come up with different ways of using it, both as a purely digital kit and using it for hybrid work too. 

Here is my page 

 

 

Go and check out the rest of the team and see what they came up with, because their work ROCKS.

You can find them all here

 

 

Alison

Anso

Avital

Dolly (ooh ... that's me!)

Elisa

Helen

Karen C

Karen M

Kate

Nadine

Rani

Sheri

Yvonne

You can find out more about Shimelle herself HERE 

and you can find all of her digital creations over at Two Peas HERE 

 

Did I mention I was excited!

Watch out for so much fun to come.

 

FREE Sunday class and home sense

OK - so the home sense doesn't mean I have suddenly got home sense, rather that i went shopping at Home Sense.

Home Sense has to be one of our favourite stores - we love it. You get really unusual and quite quirky things there and it is very American (well canadian actually but you get the drift)

We needed a new table for the lamp in the hall to go with the new decor and we had quite set ideas about what we wanted.

We didn't get it!

We fell in love with a 6 drawer black faux laquered leather caninet and just had to have it.

We were worried it wouldn't look right but it did.

My picture of the day is just a tiny part of it - it will be revealed in all of its glory once the new carpet is down on Tuesday. But surfice to say we both love it.

It is hard to photograph to get the beautiful design to show up.

I made my LSNED page as well (plus some DT work and a fair bit of very hot sunbathing)

I have had enough of home improvements now. Once the new carpet is down that is us done .... well for this year at least.

In 12 months we have had a new kitchen, a new bedroom, a new en suite, new windows and a new hall stairs and landing. Time, energy, money and creativity have now all run out.

What have I learnt today?

• Having always wanted a laquered cupboard I now have one - well a faux one anyways

• The sun still burns in September

• New weight loss photos show my shape is changing .... for the better

• Weekends go too quickly

And so to the class page.

As usual feel free to totally disregard it, use the general idea, use the whole idea etc but please, don't call it your own.

You can download the class HERE

Home decor canvas supersized

 We hung a few things up in the  new bedroom today and one was a big canvas I had made for the room.

I wanted to create a piece of abstract art but Nigel was quite keen on a scrapbook page.

A 12 x 12 page would have been too small in the space we needed to fill and I wasn't convinced so gave it some thought.

Then, when I was wandering in Dunelm, as I so often seem to be LOL, I cam across this

 

It is a firly horrible canvas and the packaging was ripped and it was reduced to £1.99. It measures about 20" square and was just what I wanted.

Canvases are quite expensive and this was good and cheap so it wouldn't matter if I ruined it.

 

We had quite a lot of wallpaper samples at home from when we had been picking things for the new bedroom and so I utilised some of those and made the canvas to match the colour scheme.

 

Nigel picked the photo he wanted on there as it is his favourite picture from our canada trip. Us at Peyto lake.

 

The picture was taken before it was hung so it is just leaning against a bookcase.

Looks like a regular scrapbook page but i can assure you it is almost 2 foot square.

I cut out lots of flowers from one of the papers as they were the exact colour I wanted and were to scale - everything else was way too small.

 

 

The title was a little challenging so in the end I opted for a stamped setiment quote to put in an oval at the bottom. i used some of my lush Technique Tuesday stamps for it.

 

 

I would have opted for just a landscape view or soemthing more abstract but this was made for Nigel - his choice and he is thrilled with it.

 

My photo of the day today is my little boy who has been so confused by all the work going on over the past two weeks. He was so scared when he was finally allowed in the bedroom and bathroom (they had been banned for two weeks as there was way too much in there that was dangerous.)

He braved it again this afternoon and I loved this picture of him.

Production Line

It has been a veritable production line here today as I made 17 thank you cards  largely the same design.

I have no idea why I didn't go for a simpler design. the individually stamped and painted butterflies took an age to do and whilst the first 5 were theraputic, by 13 and 14 the benefits had worn off LOL

However, they were cards to thank the girls and the parennts for the wonderful gift and so I wanted to make them nice and special.

So my photo of the day was a sampling of them.

Last night I made a really really quick and simple page so I could say I had taken part in the Hero arts competition.

It is one of the quickest pages I have ever made - about 40 minutes I recon. I used quite a lot of my lush Hero Arts stamps that I love and it is one of my favourite holiday pictures ever.

Nij and I were at peyto lake very early. I gather from other people and from guide books that it gets very very busy there.

We were alone - totaly and utterly alone for quite a long time. It made it very special.

In the end a lone Japanese tourist arrived and we asked him to take this picture of us both. We had tried taking the photo ourselves but the arms were simply not long enough to get us and the view in!

I dyed my hair yesterday and went for a red shade as it is the holidays.

Don't know why i bothered.

The water was red - blood red - as was everything else.

My hair - it is just black.

There seems to be no hint of reddness at all.

Oh well .... phase two next weekend. I am buying a highlights kit and a very terrified Nigel is planning to add lowlights to my now black with no hint of red hair!

We'll see what happens shall we LOL

Maligne Lake - Free class

I was intending a different class page this week but time has got the better of me with everything that has been going on.

This was a class page I taught a while ago but I haven't shared the class on here and I hope it is something you might enjoy.

If you would like to use it I would love to know what you think of it. Just pop a comment at the end of this post.

You can download the class page HERE

I will be back later with my photo of the day

OK so we tidied out the top cupbaords over the bed in our bedroom this afternoon as a first stage of getting ready for bedroom and bathroom renovation.

I have a serious shoe addiction and quite a lot of the shoes that i wear arely - you know .... the sort you can only wear when you are planning zero walking and standing due to high heels that i just can't wear for long now - are in those cupboards. BUT I did get rid of 12 pairs of shoes (some brand new i am ashamed to admit and they have gone int he charity shop pile)